Padres: A Trade for Catcher Pedro Severino Could Make Sense

San Diego Padres — What Would it Cost? Is it Worth the Move?

Like many teams rebuilding, the Baltimore Orioles will likely want a young starting pitching prospect.

I think a straight-up swap of Adrian Morejon for Severino would make a lot of sense and be a pretty fair trade.

The Padres are fortunate to have a great depth of starting pitching. And while I like Morejon, I think the Padres could live with this deal.

Perhaps San Diego tries to package Joey Lucchesi with a B-level prospect and get the deal done that way as I think that could work too.

But would that be worth it for a back-up catcher that can’t play defense?

I guess that depends on what Jayce Tingler and the Padres value most in their catcher.

Right now Padres’ catchers rank 28th in baseball with an OPS of .491 to go along with a .122 average.

But on the flip side, Padres’ catchers have the sixth-best defensive rating in MLB (mostly because of Austin Hedges), according to FanGraphs.

Obviously you’d like to be great at both. Perhaps with the pairing of Severino and Hedges those two sides even out.

Despite the lack of offensive production from the catcher position, the Padres offensive has still been one of the best in baseball.

And it is important to have a good defensive catcher behind the plate for all these young starters.

It’s not an easy decision to make, but I feel like Severino could help give the offense a boost and give the Padres a solid back-up catcher/DH for the next several years.